Nowadays household and professional cooking ovens known in the art offer functionalities beyond a normal cooking or baking of foods disposed in a cooking chamber thereof. Particularly, a number of household and professional cooking ovens offer the functionality of smoking foods by using smoking substance such as aromatic wood chips either natural or chemically treated along with traditional cooking or baking of foods.
In order to achieve that, such cooking ovens typically comprise a smoking assembly which is in fluid communication with a cooking chamber of the cooking oven and that comprises an element, typically a heating element, for generating smoke from the combustion of the smoking substance. The smoke leaves the smoking assembly and reaches the cooking chamber of the cooking oven where it smokes the food contained therein.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,157,668 discloses an oven having a first food preparation apparatus in the form of a convection heat source and/or a steam production assembly and/or a radiating heat source, and a second food preparation apparatus in the form of a smoking assembly. The oven can operate at least one of the food preparation apparatus simultaneously with the smoking assembly or separately from the smoking assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,304,697 discloses a smoker device having a low profile fits beneath the lowermost rack of an oven thereby allowing full use of all possible shelves of the oven. The smoker device comprises a uniquely shaped bi-level heater element that allows the smoker device pan to be cradled just above the bottom wall of the oven chamber. A method and system allow a processor control of the smoker device manually or automatically as a part of a programmed recipe.
European Patent No. EP 2009356 discloses a smoke and electric heating oven that includes an oven muffle provided with a cavity therein, a smoke generator with a heating box installed in the cavity, and an outer casing. The oven muffle has at least one first heating element installed outside the cavity, and at least one second heating element installed in the cavity. The second heating element may extend into the heating box. The at least one first heating element can transmit heat to the receiving chamber to bake an object in the receiving chamber. The at least one second heating element can heat wooden chips that are placed in the heating box to produce smoke to smoke the baked object in the receiving chamber, thereby providing the oven with the function of baking with electric heat and smoking with wooden chips.
Conversely, the Applicant has found in the art no examples of household or professional appliance adapted to offer functionalities for flavoring foods by means of flavoring substances, such as for example flavoring herbs (e.g., rosemary, eucalyptus, thyme, lavender, sage, lemon balm, hop or mixtures thereof).